Hallway to Nowhere

Category: poetry

  • Crystalline ( #2 PouncePunk25)

    and let the rain fall from the sky

    run down my face to hide my tears

    these so concentrate with sorrow

    they drop to the ground as glistening gems

    each one shot through with silken filaments

    fissures of experienced compassion

    that fractured open my heart’s facade

    these rise around me a crystalline mountain

    shining to return light wherever it be found

    and the flowing streams around this calm

    radiance dancing from surface to surface

    even the weighted lowering clouds gain relief

    their burden thereby transformed

  • Fight (Pouncepunk 25)

    I was never to his war

    bloodied land, rubbled homes, shrieking wounded

    but he brought it home to me upon my doorstep

    the ugly desperation of those who returned

    so haunted by not dying that death trailed them

    whispering constantly names of the killed

    it’s only the wind I told him again and again

    he could not hear me through the endless moan

    until one night I learned how heavy a gun can be

    when you remove it from a limp hand

    how futile comfort offered seemed

    against the stark reality of a bullet casing

    I never heard the shot

    how do I say he lived, when he never left the fight?

  • The Dead (Poem)

    do not tell me the dead do not change – they do, for I have seen this myself

    they morph and writhe just as the living, and just as seldom rest in peace

    we hold them tethered here in loving bonds or bitter chains

    we do not let them go beyond

    those who lay beneath the ground, burn into smoke and ash

    have their bones picked clean by birds

    but leave behind no one to grieve, they moved in such silent ways

    though they might have done inestimable good

    these will be the truly free

  • Beautiful Poisons (Poem)

    but look! there upon the shelves in bottles of iridescent glass

    are arrayed the beautiful poisons, there displayed to dazzle the attention

    five lustrous containers, their very appearance preoccupies

    I remove one to drink my fill, then heady with ignorance I reel and fall

    to find myself within the calm eye of the storm hearing the destructive winds turn into laughter

    with a snap of my fingers this disappears, and I return the vessel to the shelf

    I am neither a dot nor an enclosing line but both and space itself

    poisons, like demons, are not to be feared

    befriend them, for they are more helpful than gods

    remember what treasures they are

  • Time In January (Poem)

    though I would like to hold time in my hands

    cradled to gaze into its prismed fragile depths

    I would be shattered by what I would see

    the ordinary moments with the power to undo

    the icy fragment of morning slicking the pavement

    the juddering echoes of the bone white moon

    the sharp blink of a crow’s eye destroying across January’s eons

    the sudden crack of a gunshot felling one hapless deer

    and somewhere else men are falling dead

    these passing brief are already too hard to know

    I cannot repair with my current meager tools

    myself being in constant dissolution and dissolve

    unbecoming and mostly not there

  • Quandary and Answer (Poem)

    as a child, I often considered where to place my grief

    if I buried it deep in the ground, I feared what might arise in season

    a poisonous plant, a nest of spiders, a revenant with sightless eyes

    if I threw it into the sea, I knew it would wash ashore somewhere

    a killing algal bloom, a stinging jelly, a jagged sharp of broken glass

    if I sent it upward into the sky, I thought of all that could already destroy

    a hurricane, a flooding rain, toxic smoke from nearby mills

    and could not add to these because I knew what it was not to be able to breathe

    in the end I decided best to keep my sorrow and make it a friend

    the world had woe enough

  • Further Instructions of The Cheshire Cat (Poem)

    present moment

    butterfly flicker of aperture

    mountain ridge glimpse of vast tableau

    realization a solid thud

    boot kick to the chest

    inhale exhale infinite worlds

    laughter shimmers like sparkling sorrow

    joy as groundless as existence itself

    now right now let go of all

    now right now let go

  • Sea Glass In The Foothills (Poem)

    all was gray or darker gray or blue that shaded into gray

    except for one streak right above the mountains

    the opaque green of sea glass glowing right there

    there at the horizon, there where you had to pay attention

    there so that you noticed the light

    one to carry into your dreams, one to remember

    one to shine in wonder when your heart turns to ash

    thereby to transform it into a beacon

    om tare tuttare ture soha

    (a bridge to a source of kindness and compassion)

  • Gyps and Corvids (Poem)

    when vultures kettle in the sky

    catching thermals with their broad black wings

    what do they feel as they circle and glide

    crows can hold grudges but will also befriend

    and retain their reasons for a very long time

    so perhaps when vultures descend to a wake

    as they gather to begin their venue

    they pause for a moment of brief recognition

    that a being just like them will be their meal

  • Desolate (Poem)

    I would give up this heart these bones

    such broken fractured things

    stitched together with fraying thread

    strung with tiny bits of pearl

    mending a constant futile task

    the hour short as night falls fast

    and I am wearied beyond my words